HX64099520 
QP45  .G25  A  brief  synopsis  of 

.»VI.    ATlf  11^^910    of 


Ijroblem  of  \/iv>l6ection 

(a  plea  for  proper  Keflulatlon) 


College  of  ^IjpsJiciansf  anh  burgeons 
I.iljrarp 


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http://www.archive.org/details/briefsynopsisofpOOsoci 


A  Brief  Synopsis 


of 


The  Problem  of  Vivisection 

(A   Plea   for   Proper   Regulation) 


BT 

A.  E.  GAZZAM 


"It  is  manifest  that  the  practice  [of  vivisection]  is 
from  its  very  nature  liable  to  great  abuse,  and  that 
since  it  is  impossible  for  society  to  entertain  the  idea 
of  putting  an  end  to  it,  it  ought  to  be  subjected  to  due 
regulation  and  control." 

Report  Signed  by  Thomas  Huxley  as  Member  of 
THE  British  Royal  Commission  on  Vivisection. 


NEW  YORK 

1908 


"We  stand,  in  truth,  face  to  face  with  a  new  vice — 

new — at  least  in  its  vast  modern  development,  and  the 

passion  wherewith  it  is  pursued — the  vice  of  scientific 

cruelty." 

Frances  Power  Cobb. 


"The  horrible  suffering  which  man  forces  the  ani- 
mals to  bear  is  falling  back  upon  him  in  suffering  and 

death." 

Dr.   Boucher. 


"Every  living  creature  has  his  part  of  justice  to  de- 
mand on  earth.  Men  are  the  elder  brothers  of  the  ani- 
mals. They  work  for  us — let  our  reason  think  for 
them!    Let  our  humanity  give  them  at  least  a  merciful 

death." 

Dr.   Boucher. 


"Vivisection  will  always  be  the  better  for  vigilant 
supervision  and  for  whatever  outside  pressure  can  be 
brought  against  it.  Such  pressure  will  never  be  too 
great,  nor  will  it  retard  progress  a  hair's  breadth  in  the 
hands  of  that  very  limited  class  zvJio  are  likely  mate- 
rially to  advance  knowledge  by  its  practice." 

Henry  J.  Bigelow,  LL.D. 


Introduction 


THIS  synopsis  of  the  subject  of  vivisection  was  originally 
prepared  in  the  winter  of  1907,  with  the  view  of  giving  a 
condensed  but  comprehensive  and  clear  presentation  of 
this  important  subject,  and  was  from  the  beginning  intended 
for  some  sort  of  widespread  circulation. 

My  earnest  desire  in  the  publication  of  this  pamphlet — 
which  represents  many  days  of  laborious  but  willing  toil — is  that 
it  may  serve  to  throw  before  the  "general  public,"  which,  after 
all  is  the  final  judge  in  all  matters  of  common  interest,  a  ray 
of  clear  daylight  upon  this  most  important  matter,  in  respect 
to  which,  many  people  have  been  completely  in  the  dark ;  and  may 
thus  help  to  emphasize  the  necessity  for  some  legal  regulation 
of  the  practice. 

Acknowledging  that  great  good  may  have  come  and  may 
still  be  coming  through  the  practice  of  vivisection,  but  knowing 
that  wanton  and  debasing  cruelties  have  also  been  practiced 
under  its  convenient  name,  I  have  tried  to  strike  the  proper 
balance  between  the  attitude  of  the  fanatical  scientist  and  the 
sentimental  reformer. 

I  have  honestly  endeavored  to  put  the  real  facts  of  the  case 
as  recorded  by  careful  investigators,  and  ungarnished  by  false 
emotions  of  any  kind,  before  the  eyes  of  the  general  reader 
upon  whose  intelligent  discrimination  so  much  depends. 

In  regard  to  the  atrocities  of  Alfort,  I  felt  the  grave  necessity 
of  distinctly  emphasizing  the  fact  that  many  of  the  most 
ghastly  and  uncalled  for  brutalities — perpetrated  upon  the  lower 
orders  of  created  life — have  been  enacted  at  a  widely-famed 
Veterinary  College  with  no  semblance  of  a  pretense  of  ameliorat- 
ing human  suffering  or  prolonging  human  life. 


Many  of  them,  in  fact,  were  entirely  useless  and  unnecessary 
even  from  the  standpoint  of  any  sane  veterinary. 

It  has  actually  been  claimed  at  Alfort  that  the  carte  blanche 
given  the  students  to  commit  these  wanton  deeds  of  blood  render 
them  more  callous  to  suffering  and  thus  better  fitted  for  future 
usefulness  in  their  work. 

One  of  the  paramount  evils  of  unrestrained  vivisection 
wherever  it  exists,  is  its  hardening  and  pernicious  influence  upon 
the  natures  of  the  students  who  witness  or  aid  in  this  awful 
work. 

"Vice  is  a  monster  of  so  frightful  mien, 
As  to  be  hated  needs  but  to  be  seen; 
But  seen  too  oft,  familiar  to  the  face, 
We  first  endure,  then  pity,  then  embrace." 

Public  knowledge,  and  with  it  public  sentiment,  are  at  last 
being  awakened  and  aroused  to  some  extent  in  this  vital 
subject,  and  I  feel  the  time  is  now  ripe  when  the  really  influential 
classes  of  the  community  should  be  given,  in  brief  form,  a  fair- 
minded  and  unbiased  view  of  the  entire  subject,  instead  of  being 
compelled  to  depend  on  the  fragmentary  and  ofttimes  distorted 
information  to  be  obtained  from  the  newspapers  in  which,  first 
the  advocates  of  unlimited  vivisection,  and  then  the  righteously 
indignant,  but  misinformed  members  of  some  society  for  animal 
protection,  desiring  its  total  abolition,  alternately  give  vent  to  the 
expressions  of  their  equally  radical  views. 

Before  closing  I  wish  to  express  my  grateful  acknowledg- 
ment to  Dr.  Albert  Leflingwell,  the  eloquent  advocate  of  the 
cause  of  reform  to  whose  excellent  work,  entitled,  "The  Vivi- 
section Question,"  I  am  indebted  for  a  very  large  part  of  my 
statistics,  and  to  any  others  whom  I  may  have  had  occasion 
to  quote. 

In  conclusion,  I  wish  also  to  express  my  deep  appreciation 
of  the  earnest,  intelligent  and  untiring  efforts  of  Frederick  P. 
Bellamy,  Esq.,  to  secure  legislation  which  would  legalize  the 
practice  of  vivisection  on  so  sound  a  basis  that  it  could  no  longer 
be  either  an  object  at  which  missiles  of  total  destruction  could 


"be  hurled  with  some  excuse,  or  a  practice  richly  deserving  our 
abhorrence  and  contempt;  but  instead,  a  dignified  practice  con- 
ducted only  by  competent,  high-minded  men,  for  scientific,  high- 
minded  purposes,  in  a  high-minded  way. 

At  the  end  of  this  pamphlet  will  be  found  appended  a  copy 
of  the  bill  which  he  espoused  and  which,  although  it  may  not 
accomplish  all  that  could  be  desired,  is  a  good  beginning;  and 
because  of  its  excellent  moderation,  has  met  with  the  approval 
of  a  large  number  of  the  profession  itself.  I  hope  that  the 
following  pages  will  be  read  in  the  spirit  in  which  they  were 
written  and  that  they  may  help  on  the  cause  of  true  Vivisection 
-E.eform. 

A.  E.  Gazzam. 
Cornwall-on-Hudson,  August  12,  1908. 


INDEX. 


PAGE 

Introduction   5 

I.     Definition  of  Vivisection   U 

II.     Conscientious  Moderation   12 

III.  Exaggeration  of  Utility  13 

IV.  Scientific  Indifference    14 

V.     Opponents  of  Unlimited  Vivisection 15 

VI.     Secrecy  in  Modern  Vivisection 16 

VII.     Abuse  of  Vivisection  17 

VIII.     Atrocities  of  Vivisection    ig 

IX.     Unprincipled  Experiments   20 

X.     Scientific  Fanaticism   22 

XL     Equitable  Sense  of  Proportion 23 

XII.    No  Laws  Governing  Vivisection  in  the  United  States 24 

XIII.  Secrecy  an  Invitation  to  Excess 24 

XIV.  Admission  of  a  Former  Advocate  of  the  Practice 25 

XV.     Curare    26 

XVI.    Vivisection  at  Harvard   27 

XVII.    Experiments  on  Cats  28 

XVIIL     Inconsistency  of  Medical  Evidence 29 

XIX,     Brutalizing  Tendency S3 

XX.     Omnipotent  Justice  34 

XXI.     Callous  and  Defiant  Indifference 36 

XXII.    Wanton  Abuse 37 

XXIIL     Now  Mark  the  Contrast 37 

XXIV.     How  Far  Shall  Demonstration  be  Carried? 38 

XXV.    American  Physiologists 39 

XXVI.     The  Just  Moral  Proportion 40 

XXVII.    Vivisection  in  Public  Schools 41 

XXVIII.     Vivisection  for  Veterinary  Purposes 42 

XXIX.     A  Strong  Moral  Arraignment 44 

XXX.     Injury  to  Science  45 

XXXL     Conclusion   46 


The  Problem  of  Vivisection 

(A  Plea  for  Proper  Regulation.) 

I.     Definition  of  Vivisection. 

"^HE  word  "vivisection"  is  a  most  comprehensive 
one.  It  may  mean  the  injection  of  some  loath- 
some disease  into  the  system  of  some  unsuspecting 
human  patient,  or  the  use  of  some  new  or  rare,  and 
most  dangerous  drug,  that  the  over-zealous  practitioner 
of  the  ''healing  art"  may  note  the  effect  produced. 

It  may  on  the  other  hand  merely  imply  the  inocula- 
tion of  countless  myriads  of  guinea  pigs,  rabbits  and 
even  dogs,  with  the  virus  of  the  dread  and  terrible 
cancer,  or  of  hydrophobia — that  disease  in  which  all 
sufferers,  whether  human  or  otherwise,  are  doomed  to 
die  in  appalling  agony. 

If  any  successful  remedies  for  these  particular 
maladies  should  ever  be  discovered  I  personally  doubt 
the  probability  of  this  most  desirable  end  being 
attained  by  means  of  such  wholesale  cruelty  toward 
these  dumb  hosts  of  sentient  beings. 

Yet  we  must  all  admit  that  experiments  of  this 
nature  are  supposed  to  be  made  with  the  ultimate  end 
in  view,  of  alleviating  the  suffering  and  prolonging  the 
lives  of  human  beings 

Although  physicians  differ  very  widely  as  to  the 
value  of  antitoxin  in  diphtheria  there  are  competent 
men  among  them  who  declare  it  to  be  not  only  practi- 
cally useless  but  in  fact  one  of  the  most  abominable 
swindles  ever  practiced  upon  a  too  confiding  public. 

II 


But  the  main  branch  of  vivisection  and  the  one 
which  demands  earnest  attention  and  careful  regula- 
tion is  the  cutting,  burning  and  mutilating  operations 
performed  upon  all  varieties  of  animals,  including 
reptiles,  and  extending  up  as  high  as  monkeys,  for  the 
purpose  of  physiological  experimentation  or  class  dem- 
onstrations. 

This  is  the  sort  of  thing  to  which  the  word  vivi- 
section especially  applies;  but  let  it  not  be  supposed 
that  it  necessarily  implies  either  great  pain  or  even 
death. 

It  may  mean  death  without  any  greater  pain  to  the 
animal  than  the  administration  of  an  actual  anaesthetic, 
or  it  may  mean  prolonged  excruciating  agony,  and  pain- 
ful mutilation  not  even  mercifully  terminated  by  death. 

II.    Conscientious  Moderation. 

There  are  some  experiments  upon  animals  which 
are  undertaken  by  men  of  intrinsic  worth  and  honor 
(as  well  as  of  high  professional  standing)  with  the 
sincere  desire  to  contribute  really  useful  facts  to  scien- 
tific knowledge,  and  who  are  scrupulously  careful  to 
inflict  as  little  pain  upon  their  victims  as  circumstances 
will  possibly  permit. 

"There  are  men  who  can  stand  above  the  lowest 
creature  with  such  exceeding  pity,  such  anxiety  to  spare 
it  every  needless  throe,  that  not  a  pang  is  inflicted  of 
which  they  do  not  count  the  cost.  Such  an  investigator 
was  Sir  Charles  Bell,  who  hesitated  even  to  corroborate 
one  of  the  physiological  discoveries  of  this  century  at 
the  price  of  painful  experiments." 


III.     Exaggeration  of  Utility. 

In  his  valuable  volume  entitled  "The  Vivisection 
Question,"  Albert  Leffingwell,  M.D.,  makes  the  follow- 
ing statement:  "A  great  danger  inherent  in  the  prac- 
tice of  vivisection,  is  the  injury  to  science  caused  by 
an  exaggeration  of  its  utility. 

"For  despite  much  argument,  the  extent  of  this 
utility  remains  still  an  open  question.  No  one  is  so 
foolish  as  to  deny  the  possibility  of  future  usefulness 
to  any  discovery  whatever;  but  there  is  a  distinction 
very  easily  slurred  over  in  the  eagerness  of  debate, 
between  present  applicability  and  remote  potential 
service. 

"Only  let  me  use  the  pacifying  shibboleth  of  certain 
writers,  and  claim  that  all  of  the  investigations  are  in 
the  general  line  of  researches  made  to  mitigate  human 
suffering  and  prolong  human  life,  and  there  is  hardly 
any  extremity  which  the  public  opinion  of  to-day  will 
not  sanction  and  excuse." 

Sir  William  Gull,  M.D.,  was  questioned  before  the 
Royal  Commission  whether  he  could  enumerate  any 
therapeutic  remedies  which  have  been  discovered  by 
vivisection,  and  he  replied  with  fervor:  "that  cases 
bristle  around  us  everywhere." 

Yet,  excepting  Hall's  experiments  on  the  nervous 
system,  he  could  enumerate  only  various  forms  of  dis- 
ease, our  knowledge  of  which  is  due  to  Harvey's  dis- 
covery two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago! 

The  question  was  pushed  closer,  and  so  brought  to 
the  necessity  of  a  definite  reply,  he  answered:  "I  do 
not  say  at  present  our  therapeutics  are  much,  but  there 

13 


are  lines  of  experiments  which  seem  to  promise  help  in 
therapeutics." 

On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Herman,  the  great  German 
apologist  for  vivisection,  tells  us  frankly  and  honestly 
that  "the  advance  of  our  knowledge  and  not  practical 
utility  to  medicine  is  the  true  and  straightforward  object 
of  vivisection. 

"No  true  investigator  in  his  researches  thinks  of 
practical  utilization. 

"Science  can  afford  to  despise  this  justification  with 
which  vivisection  has  been  defended." 

IV.    Scientific  Indifference. 

"I  do  not  believe,"  says  Dr.  Charles  Richet,  professor 
of  physiology  in  Paris,  "that  a  single  experimenter  says 
to  himself,  when  he  gives  curare  to  a  rabbit  or  cuts  the 
spinal  cord  of  a  dog  'here  is  an  experiment  which  will 
relieve  or  cure  disease.' 

"No ;  he  does  not  think  of  that :  He  says  to  himself, 
*I  shall  clear  up  an  obscure  point;  I  will  seek  out  a  new 
fact: 

"And  this  scientific  curiosity  which  alone  animates 
him,  is  explained  by  the  idea  he  has  of  science. 

"This  is  why  we  pass  our  days  surrounded  by  groan- 
ing creatures,  in  the  midst  of  blood  and  suffering,  and 
bending  over  palpitating  entrails." 

In  his  excellent  work.  Dr.  Lefiingwell  says:  "The 
vivisector  promises  to  inflict  no  unnecessary  pain. 

"  'But  your  experiment  will  be  absolutely  useless/ 
one  remarks. 

"  'Yes,'  answers  he,  'so  far  as  the  treatment  or  pre- 
vention of  disease  is  concerned;  but  suppose  I  do  not 

14 


admit  that  the  gratification  of  my  scientific  curiosity  on 
any  point  is  absolutely  useless  to  myself  if  a  certain 
intellectual  satisfaction  is  thereby  secured  ?' " 

V.    opponents  of  Unlimited  Vivisection. 

It  is  true  there  are  those,  who,  aroused  with  indigna- 
tion and  horror  at  the  many  utterly  useless  and  ghastly 
tortures  carried  on  under  the  name  of  scientific  investi- 
gation, with  the  sham  pretense  of  possible  benefit  to 
mankind  declare  that  they  would  welcome  any  law  for 
the  total  abolition  of  a  practice  from  which  many  humane 
physicians  claim  to  have  derived  much  useful  instruc- 
tion. 

But  if  the  out-and-out  antivivisectionists  may  be 
called  extremists  or  even  fanatics,  what  would  one  say 
of  Dr.  Watson  and  those  "physiologists"  Flint  and 
Crile? 

In  recent  years  several  societies  have  been  formed 
in  the  United  States  in  direct  opposition  to  the  practice 
of  vivisection  which  obtains  so  generally  throughout 
the  country. 

Many  of  the  physicians  look  upon  these  people  as 
fanatics,  who  have  found  nothing  better  to  employ  their 
time  than  to  try,  in  their  ignorance  of  the  facts,  to  throw 
a  serious  impediment  in  the  path  of  science. 

Many  physicians  are  themselves,  however,  far  more 
ignorant  of  the  diabolical  and  useless  extremes  to  which 
even  many  American  experimenters  have  been  known 
to  go,  than  are  those  kind  and  sincere  laymen,  who  are 
letting  their  own  hearts  bleed  in  order  that  they  may 
look  into  a  most  painful  but  important  subject  in  defence 
of  the  innocent  and  helpless,  and  are  bravely  and  per- 

15 


sistently  following  the  war-path  with  endless  patience 
in  the  face  of  long  continued  discouragement,  against 
a  most  formidable  and  subtle  adversary. 

The  practice  of  vivisection  is  now  conducted  with 
much  secrecy. 

VI.    Secrecy  in  Modern  Vivisection. 

Heartless  experimenters,  as  a  rule,  have  learned 
whom  they  can  trust  within  the  walls  of  their  modern 
star  chambers  of  torture,  and  the  more  useless  the  experi- 
ment and  extreme  the  torture  inflicted  upon  their  help- 
less victims,  the  more  cautious  and  secretive  they  will 
be  in  regard  to  its  practice. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  all  fanatical  advocates  of  vivi- 
section unlimited  and  unrestrained  should  he  particu- 
larly hitter  and  ardent  against  opening  their  doors  to 
any  legal  inspection  even  though  the  law  appointed  kind- 
hearted  and  conscientious  vivisectors  to  fulfil  that 
urgently  needed  ofJUce.  To-day  it  is  practically  impos- 
sible for  any  known  opponent  of  unlimited  vivisection 
to  gain  access  to  any  laboratory  where  it  is  conducted. 

The  general  public  I  think  it  may  be  said  without 
exaggeration  scarcely  know  even  the  meaning  of  the 
word  vivisection,  and  in  many  cases,  w^ien  some  rumors 
of  horrible  cruelties  have  reached  private  individuals, 
they  have  been  horrified  and  seized  upon  their  first 
opportunity  to  make  inquiries  upon  the  subject  of  their 
own  kind  family  physician  in  whom  they  have  the  utmost 
confidence. 

He  is  very  apt  to  give  them  soothing  assurances  of 
little  or  no  needless  cruelty  being  employed  in  the  prac- 
tice of  vivisection,  and  they  will  soon  forget  they  ever 

i6 


heard  of  it.  It  is  possible  for  men  to  have  graduated  m 
medicine  from  some  of  our  colleges  without  having  been 
witness  to  these  scenes  of  wanton  brutality,  and  many 
of  these  good  doctors  who  thus  advise  are  really  them- 
selves ignorant  of  a  great  deal  of  the  abuse  of  a  system 
from  which  they  have  been  taught  to  believe  they  have 
derived  valuable  instruction,  and  some  of  them  will 
emphatically  declare  that  the  accounts  of  these  fearful 
atrocities  are  most  unusual  and  generally  greatly  exag- 
gerated. They  will  go  on  to  say  that  they  cannot  believe 
that  there  exist  in  the  medical  profession  in  this  enlight- 
ened day  many  men,  who  have  become  sufficiently 
depraved  to  perform  useless  cruelties,  or  who  have  sunk 
so  low  that  they  have  become  completely  infatuated  with 
the  morbid  pleasure  of  inflicting  pain. 

VII.    Abuse  of  Vivisection. 

It  is,  however,  from  the  medical  profession  that  our 
best  evidence  of  existing  abuses  is  obtained.  Even  vivi- 
sectors  sometimes  make  mistakes  in  whom  they  admit, 
although  as  a  rule  so  cautious  as  to  what  experiments 
to  perform  only  in  the  presence  of  such  men  as  can 
pretty  surely  be  expected  to  keep  the  knowledge  of 
them  very  closely  to  themselves. 

However,  much  has  leaked  out  through  their  occa- 
sionally daring  to  give  public  exhibitions  of  their  awful 
cruelties  to  indiscriminate  professional  assemblies. 

Many  private  experiments  of  the  most  ghastly 
description  are  made  by  fanatical  vivisectors  solely  for 
the  purpose  of  gratifying  mere  idle  curiosity,  or  to 
satisfy  their  personal  vanity  by  enabling  them  to  write 
a   paper    or   lecture   upon    some   mere   abstract   fact 

17 


which  bears  no  conceivable  relationship  to  the  treat- 
ment or  cure  of  disease. 

But  there  are  certain  temperaments,  as  is  especially 
frequent  among  the  Latin  races,  which  revel  in  the  sight 
of  blood,  and  fall  deeply  victim  to  an  unholy  lust  for 
torture.  In  one  of  his  works,  Dr.  George  M.  Gould, 
the  present  editor  of  ''American  Medicine,"  and  one  of 
the  leading  medical  writers  of  the  country  says: 

"If  a  very  limited  use  of  vivisection  experiment  is 
necessary  for  scientific  and  medical  progress,  it  must  he 
regulated  by  law,  and  carried  out  with  zealous  guarding 
against  excess  and  against  suffering,  and  the  maimed 
animals  painlessly  killed  when  the  experiment  is  com- 
plete. ' 

"The  practice  carried  on  hy  conceited  jackanapes  to 
prove  over  and  over  again  already  ascertained  results, 
to  minister  to  egotism,  for  didactic  purposes — these  are 
not  necessary  and  must  be  forbidden." 

Dr.  Gould  has  also  admitted  that  "there  are  men 
now  practicing  vivisection  in  this  country  who  are  a 
disgrace  both  to  science  and  humanity." 

Dr.  Theophilus  Parvin,  one  of  the  professors  in 
Jefferson  Medical  College  of  Philadelphia,  speaking  of 
physiologists  says:  "there  are  some,  who  seem,  seek- 
ing useless  knowledge,  to  be  blind  to  the  writhing  agony, 
and  deaf  to  the  cry  of  pain  of  their  victims,  and  who 
have  been  guilty  of  the  most  damnable  cruelties  without 
the  denunciation  by  the  public  that  their  wickedness 
deserves  and  demands;  these  criminals  are  not  confined 
to  Germany  or  France,  but  may  be  found  in  our  own 
country." 

On  page  194  of  Dr.  Lef!ingweirs  book  is  to  be  found 

18 


the  following:  "I  but  touch  the  shadow  of  an  awful 
mystery  when  I  say  that  one  of  the  most  horrible  forms 
of  mental  and  sexual  perversion  is  displayed  in  the  tor- 
ture of  animals  and  human  beings." 

Dr.    Krafft-Ebing   of   the    University   of   Vienna, 

declares  that  there  are  "numerous  cases  of  beings  in 

human  form  who  care  only  for  the  sight  of  suffering." 

.     The  rest  of  the  sentence  decency  will  not 

permit  me  to  repeat. 

Again  I  quote  from  Dr.  Leffingwell's  book:  "Dr. 
Rolleston,  Professor  of  Anatomy  at  Oxford  University, 
but  hinted  at  the  truth  when  he  told  the  Royal  Commis- 
sion 'that  the  sight  of  a  living,  bleeding  and  quivering 
organism,  most  undoubtedly  acts  in  a  particular  way  on 
the  nature  within  us' — that  lower  nature  which  we 
possess  in  common  with  the  carnivora." 

VIII.    Atrocities  of  Vivisection. 

Dr.  Leffingwell  himself  has  declared:  "No  facts 
of  history  are  capable  of  more  certain  verification  than 
the  tortures  which  have  marked  the  vivisections  of 
Magendie  and  Bernard,  of  Bert  and  Mantegazza  and 
a  host  of  their  imitators.  *It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that 
inhumanity  may  be  found  in  persons  of  a  very  high 
position  as  physiologists;  we  have  seen  that  it  was  so 
in  Magendie.'  " 

The  abuses  of  research  include  every  form  of  excru- 
ciating and  lingering  torment  that  can  be  conceived. 

In  the  august  name  of  science,  animals  have  been 
subjected  to  burning,  baking,  freezing;  saturation  with 
inflammable  oil  and  then  setting  on  fire;  starvation  to 

19 


death ;  skinning  alive ;  larding  the  feet  with  nails ;  crush- 
ing and  tormenting  in  every  conceivable  way.  "Experi- 
ments on  animals,"  says  Dr.  Thorowgood,  "already 
extensive  and  numerous,  cannot  be  said  to  have  advanced 
therapeutics  much." 

IX.    Unprincipled  Experiments. 

To  exasperate  pain  Professor  Mantegazza  invented 
a  machine,  which  he  aptly  called  "a  tormentor."  With  it, 
he  explains,  "I  can  take  an  ear  or  a  paw  and  by  turning 
the  handle,  squeeze  it  beneath  the  teeth  of  pincers.  I 
can  lift  the  animal  by  the  suffering  part.  I  can  tear  it 
or  crush  it  in  all  sorts  of  ways."  One  experiment  was 
on  a  guinea  pig  nursing  its  young. 

A  rabbit,  after  two  hours  torment  and  a  few 
moments'  rest,  has  nails  stuck  into  its  feet  in  such  a 
way  that  "a  pain  much  more  intense,"  than  in  some  pre- 
vious experiment  is  produced. 

Two  little  creatures  are  subjected  for  two  hours  to 
the  tormentor,  then  "larded  with  long,  thin  nails  in  their 
limbs."  They  "suffer  horribly,  and  shut  up  in  the 
machine  for  two  hours  more,  they  rush  against  each 
other  and,  not  having  the  strength  to  bite,  remain  inter- 
laced, with  mouths  open,  screaming  and  groaning." 

Mantegazza,  devoted  a  year  to  the  infliction  of  tor- 
ment upon  animals,  some  pregnant,  some  nursing  their 
young — in  a  long  series  of  diseases,  and  which  ended 
in  the  attainment  of  no  beneficial  or  even  instructive 
results. 

This  so-called  scientist  himself  admits  to  watching 
day  by  day  the  agonies  of  his  victims  "with  much  pleas- 
ure and  extreme  patience."    Magendie  declared  of  his 

20 


mutilated  animals  that  'Ht  is  droll  to  see  them  skip  and 
jump  about." 

Cyon  of  St.  Petersburg  admitted  that  he  approached 
his  vivisections  with  *'a  joyful  excitement." 

Was  this  feeling  of  delight  any  different  from  the 
unbridled  blood-and-torture  lust  of  certain  imbecile  and 
thoroughly  barbarian  African  and  Oriental  monarchs? 

Schill  cut  the  nerves  of  vocalization  in  his  victims, 
in  order  to  prevent  them,  as  he  tells  us  with  diabolic 
humor  "from  delivering  their  nocturnal  concerts." 
Klein  of  London  appears  to  have  been  more  nearly 
hardened  to  all  sufferings  not  his  own,  than  to  actually 
find  pleasure  in  going  out  of  his  way  to  inflict  it.  He 
frankly  admits  that  as  an  investigator  he  held  as  entirely 
indifferent  the  sufferings  of  animals  subjected  to  his 
experiments,  and  that,  except  for  teaching  purposes,  he 
never  used  anaesthetics  unless  necessary  for  his  own  con- 
venience. 

He  openly  declared  that  he  has  "no  regard  at  all" 
for  the  sufferings  which  he  inflicted,  because  in  the 
progress  of  his  investigations  in  torture  he  had  *'no 
time,  so  to  speak,  for  thinking  what  the  animal  may 
feel  or  suffer." 

On  page  194  of  "The  Vivisection  Question"  may  be 
found  the  following:  "Regarding  the  land  (France) 
where  vivisection  is  no  more  free  than  it  is  to-day  in  the 
United  States,  the  charge  has  publicly  been  made  that 
'In  France,  they  prolong  the  vivisection  in  order  to  pro- 
cure infamous  pleasures.' " 

Dr.  Elliotson  has  said,  "I  cannot  refrain  from  ex- 
pressing my  horror  at  the  amount  of  torture  which  Dr. 

21 


Brachet  inflicted.  I  hardly  think  knowledge  is  worth 
having  at  such  a  purchase." 

Dr.  Anthony,  speaking  of  Magendie's  experiments 
says:  "I  never  gained  one  single  fact  by  seeing  these 
cruel  experiments  in  Paris.  /  know  nothing  more  from 
them  than  I  could  have  read." 

It  has  been  said  that  human  ingenuity  has  taxed 
itself  to  the  utmost  to  devise  some  new  torture,  that  one 
may  observe  what  curious  results  will  ensue.  Dr. 
Brachet,  of  Paris,  by  various  torments  inspired  a  dog 
with  utmost  anger,  and  then,  "when  the  animal  became 
furious  whenever  it  saw  me,  I  put  out  its  eyes.  I  could 
then  appear  before  it  without  the  manifestation  of  any 
aversion. 

"I  spoke,  and  immediately  its  anger  was  renewed. 

"I  then  disorganized  the  internal  ear  as  much  as  I 
could,  when  intense  inflammation  made  it  deaf,  then 
I  went  to  its  side,  spoke  aloud,  and  even  caressed  it 
without  its  falling  into  a  rage." 

The  experiments  of  certain  physiologists  are  those 
of  inhuman  devils  says  Canon  Wilberforce  of  England, 
and  I  know  all  right  minded  physicians  as  well  as  laymen 
agree  with  him. 

X.    Scientific  Fanaticism. 

Yet  "there  has  been  in  medicine,  or  surgery,"  says 
Dr.  Leflingwell,  "hardly  any  advance  in  modern  times, 
but  some  zealot  has  attributed  it  solely  to  experimenta- 
tion upon  animals ;  there  is  not  an  experiment  so  hideous 
or  brutal,  but  that  some  defender  has  arisen  to  excuse  it, 
because  perpetrated  'in  the  interests  of  sick  and  suffer- 
ing humanity !'  "    Why  is  it  that  this  line  of  argument  is 

22 


heard  chiefly  in  England  and  America  where  vivisection 
is  most  severely  challenged,  and  hardly,  if  at  all,  on  the 
continent,  where  are  practiced,  as  we  are  told  on  good 
authority,  *'the  more  brutal  methods  of  physiological 
experiments  ?" 

"The  aim  of  science,"  says  Professor  Slosson,  "is 
the  advancement  of  human  knowledge  at  any  sacrifice 
of  human  life.  If  cats  and  guinea  pigs  can  be  put  to 
any  higher  use  than  to  advance  science,  we  do  not  know 
what  it  is.  We  do  not  know  any  higher  use  we  can  put 
a  man  to. 

"A  human  life  is  nothing  compared  with  a  new  fact." 
Is  this  theory  either  safe,  Christian  or  enlightened? 

XL    Equitable  Sense  of  Proportion. 

"Given  an  end  the  attainment  of  which  is  possible 
only  through  extreme  suffering,  and  the  question  is  not 
whether  the  pan^s  are  needless,  but  rather  whether  the 
object  to  be  attained  makes  justifiable  the  infliction  of 
the  pain. 

"Wherever  is  conferred  power  without  responsibil- 
ity there  will  follow — license  and  abuse.  It  is  the  rela- 
tion of  cause  and  effect. 

"Perhaps  we  execrate  unduly  the  heartlessness  of  a 
Nero  or  a  Robespierre,  a  Magendie,  or  a  Mantegazza. 

"They  were  but  the  natural  product  of  the  time 
which  made  them  monsters  of  cruelty,  by  the  gift  of 
absolute  power." 

But  are  such  glaring  abuses  possible  in  America? 
Why  not  ?  The  realm  of  pain  has  here  no  boundaries 
which  investigation  is  required  to  observe. 

23 


XII.  No  Laws  Governing  Vivisection   in  tiie 
United  States. 

In  no  American  State  or  Commonwealth  is  there  any 
law,  any  statute  of  any  kind  whatever,  which  would 
prevent  these  experiments  from  being  repeated  here  as 
often  as  desired. 

Now  is  it  probable  that  in  a  country  like  ours,  with 
a  population  drawn  from  every  foreign  source,  experi- 
mental research,  thus  unrestrained,  remains  free  from 
the  excesses  which  have  stained  it  everywhere  else — in 
Italy,  in  France,  in  Germany? 

The  absence  of  clear  definite  and  reasonable  limita- 
tions beyond  which  vivisection  becomes  cruelty,  and 
should  not  go  is  of  itself  an  invitation  to  abuse.  And 
scientific  fanatics  have  even  been  known  to  come  to  the 
United  States  to  perpetrate  acts  of  cruelty  which  they 
knew  would  not  be  allowed  under  the  humane  restric- 
tions of  the  English  law. 

"In  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,"  says  Dr.  Lef- 
fingwell,  "countries  whose  medical  skill  is  quite  equal  to 
our  own,  a  painful  experiment  for  the  illustration  of 
facts  already  known  has  been  prohibited  for  over  fifteen 
years." 

It  is  said  on  good  authority  that  some  of  the  most 
painful  vivisections  known  to  the  history  of  the  world 
have  taken  place  in  our  own  country  within  the  last 
dozen  years. 

XIII.  Secrecy  an  Invitation  to  Excess. 

Again  I  must  use  Dr.  Leffingwell's  most  emphatic 
language :    "Not  merely  the  absence  of  legal  limitations, 

24 


but  the  absence  of  all  supervision  is  another  invitation 
to  excess. 

"Up  to  twenty  years  ago,  when  agitation  against 
cruelty  had  just  begun,  it  was  the  custom  not  only  to 
show  results  of  experiments  but  to  perform  even  the  most 
excruciating  operations  on  living  animals  before  a  class- 
room of  students,  as  aids  to  memory.  There  was  no 
special  secrecy  about  them:  anyone  able  to  find  his 
way  to  the  lecture-room  could  observe  everything. 

"If  there  were  indefensible  cruelties,  they  were  at 
any  rate  as  unconcealed  and  as  openly  done  as  in  Paris. 
Now  all  this  is  changed.  Experimentation  has  vastly 
increased;  but  it  exists  largely  in  comparative  secrecy, 
behind  locked  doors,  guarded  by  sentinels. 

"It  has  been  said  that  if  a  few  of  the  most  ghastly 
experiments  perpetrated  in  some  American  institutions 
were  performed  on  the  public  thoroughfares  an  infuri- 
ated humanity  would  instantly  demand  a  law  for  the 
proper  regulation  of  vivisection." 

XIV.    Admission  of  a  Former  Advocate  of  the 
Practice. 

Dr.  George  M.  Gould,  late  editor  of  the  Medical 
News  and  a  strong  advocate  of  vivisection  declares  that 
it  "must  be  regulated  by  law." 

In  his  address  before  the  Senate  Committee  at  Wash- 
ington delivered  by  Dr.  Leffingwell,  from  whose  work 
I  frequently  have  occasion  to  quote,  he  said:  "Mr. 
Chairman  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Committee :  It  is  now 
about  twenty-eight  years  since — touched  by  the  protest 
of  a  man  whom  I  greatly  revered  and  one  who  has  ad- 

25 


dressed  you  to-day — I  came  to  question  the  rightfulness 
of  unlimited  vivisection. 

"As  I  look  backward,  it  seems  to  me  there  was  no 
phase  of  experimentation  then  in  vogue  that  I  was  not 
eager  to  practice,  either  as  an  aid  to  memory  or  for  the 
instruction  of  pupils,  and  filled  with  the  confident  enthu- 
siasm of  youth,  I  had  believed  that  nothing  in  vivisec- 
tion could  be  wrong  that  a  man  of  science  might  approve. 

"From  that  day  to  this,  I  have  thought  much  and 
both  written  and  spoken  somewhat  on  this  question, 
but  never  a  word  against  vivisection  in  and  of  itself; 
never  without  conceding  its  utility  and  rightfulness  in 
certain  directions. 

"A  believer  in  vivisection,  I  know  that  the  practice 
has  been  abused  and  it  is  solely  against  the  abuses  that 
have  pertained  to  it,  against  practices  that  overstep  the 
boundaries  of  humanity,  that  I  have  protested  for  the 
last  twenty  years." 

XV.    Curare. 

There  is  a  subtle  poison  called  curare  which  is  used 
by  some  tribes  of  South  American  Indians  for  poisoning 
their  arrows. 

When  introduced  into  the  blood  it  causes  complete 
paralysis  of  the  motor  nerves,  without  affecting  con- 
sciousness, sensation,  circulation,  or  respiration  except 
indirectly. 

It  has  been  claimed  that  sensibility  is  in  a  measure 
rendered  even  hyper-acute  and  is  in  reality  greatly 
accentuated,  although  the  victim  himself  is  unable  to 
move  a  muscle  or  utter  the  slightest  sound,  and  is  prac- 
tically locked  within  a  living  tomb.    Curare  or  Woorari 

26 


is,  however,  a  most  convenient  thing  for  the  heartless 
vivisector  for  it  secures  his  "cadaver"  more  absolutely 
than  iron  "holders"  or  leathern  thongs,  and  he  can  work 
without  fear  of  interruption  by  the  creatures'  agonized 
cries  (and  there  is  little  fear  of  immediate  death,  or  the 
need  of  administering  further  injections). 

Dr.  Leffingwell  says:  "In  a  memorial  issued  a  few 
years  ago  against  legislation,  a  writer  is  quoted  as  say- 
ing that  *It  has  never  been  claimed  by  any  scientific  man 
that  curare  is  an  anaesthetic'  But  it  is  used  in  every 
laboratory  in  America,  where  vivisection  goes  on  to 
any  extent,  and  one  of  the  principal  government  vivi- 
sectors,  who  is  not  a  physician  but  an  experimenter, 
Charles  Wardell  Stiles,  insists  in  his  statement  to  Con- 
gress that  its  use  *is  a  point  which  should  be  left  entirely 
to  the  investigators.' " 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  Tennyson  spoke  of  this  subtle 
poison  and  deadly  paralyzer  as  "Hellish  Oorali"? 

XVI.    Vivisection  at  Harvard. 

This  drug  has  frequently  been  employed  at  Harvard, 
though  in  many  instances  animals  were  secured  by 
external  means. 

Sometimes  anaesthetics  or  narcotics  were  employed 
during  a  brief  preliminary  operation,  and  later  on  a 
dog  or  rabbit  was  fastened  down  without  any  attempt 
to  alleviate  the  pain  while  its  body  was  cut  open. 

The  following  quotations  may  serve  as  sufficient 
examples:  "November  20,  1894.  Rabbit  lightly  nar- 
cotized with  ether.  Left  phrenic  nerve  was  seized  near 
the  first  rib  and  torn  out  of  the  chest.      ...     I  have 

27 


made  such  experiments  on  thirteen  rabbits  and  one  dog, 
and  the  result  has  always  been  the  same." 

A  beautiful  engraving  gives  the  respiratory  curve 
of  this  rabbit,  "the  left  phrenic  nerve  of  which  had  been 
torn  out     .      .      .     the  stars  denote  struggling." 

"May  4,  1894.  Spinal  cord  of  rabbit  narcotized  with 
ether,  cut  on  left  side.  Seven  hours  later  he  was  in  good 
condition  and  kicked  vigorously  as  he  was  again  put 
on  the  board." 

"The  abdomen  opened  in  the  median  line — phrenic 
nerve  was  now  cut,"  etc.  There  is  no  mention  of  narcotic 
or  anaesthetic  during  the  latter  part  of  the  operation 
"seven  hours  later"  when  the  rabbit  kicking  vigorously, 
"was  again  put  on  the  board  to  have  its  abdomen 
opened." 

XVII.    Experiments  on  Cats. 

Dr.  Rutherford  never  performs  an  experiment  on 
a  cat  or  a  spaniel  if  he  can  help  it,  because  they  are  so 
exceedingly  sensitive;  and  Dr.  Horatio  Wood,  of  Phila- 
delphia, tells  us  that  the  nervous  system  of  a  cat  is  far 
more  sensitive  than  that  of  a  rabbit. 

But  though  extremely  sensitive  they  are  in  a  sense 
extremely  tenacious  of  life  and  their  negative  endurance 
is  great. 

Dr.  Brunton  of  St.  Bartholomew's  finds  cats  "such 
very  good  animals  to  operate  with"  that  on  one  occasion 
he  used  ninety  in  making  a  single  experiment. 

Dr.  Bowditch  after  some  preliminary  experiments 
on  the  vaso-motor  nerves  of  other  animals  "decided  to 
use  cats  in  this  research,  since  adult  cats  vary  less  than 

28 


dogs  in  size,  and  are  much  more  vigorous  and  tenacious 
of  life  than  rabbits  or  other  animals  usually  employed 
in  physiological  laboratories." 

The  latter  point  is  one  of  considerable  importance 
in  experiments  extending  over  several  hours. 

The  animals  were  curarized  and  kept  alive  by  arti- 
ficial respiration. 

"Death  by  curare,"  says  Claude  Bernard,  "although 
it  seems  so  tranquil,  so  exempt  from  pain  is  on  the  con- 
trary accompanied  by  the  most  atrocious  suffering 
which  the  imagination  of  man  can  conceive.  In  that 
corpse  without  movement  and  with  every  appearance 
of  death,  sensibility  and  intelligence  exist  without 
change. 

"The  cadaver  that  one  has  before  him  hears  and 
comprehends  what  goes  on  about  him,  and  feels  what- 
ever painful  impressions  we  may  inflict."  From  another 
section  of  Dr.  Leffingwell's  most  interesting  work  I 
quote  the  following: 

"The  duty  of  the  hour,  it  seems  to  me,"  says  Dr. 
Leifingwell,  "is  the  excitation  of  interest  in  this  subject; 
the  acquisition  of  knowledge  about  it;  the  encourage- 
ment of  intelligent  personal  investigation." 

Have  not  American  scientists  been  subject  to  an 
enthusiasm  that,  during  investigation  takes  no  account 
of  the  pain  it  inflicts? 

XVIII.     Inconsistency  of  Medical  Evidence. 

Look,  for  example,  at  that  series  of  one  hundred  and 
forty-one  experiments  performed  a  few  years  ago  in 
Jersey  City,  opposite  New  York. 

29 


The  object  of  the  experimenter  was,  as  he  tells  us 
in  his  account  of  them :  "to  produce  the  greatest  amount 
of  injury  to  the  spinal  cord  and  its  attachments  without 
killing  the  animals  outright ;  and  with  this  end  in  view 
a  great  number  of  dogs,  with  hobbled  limbs,  were 
dropped  from  a  height  of  twenty-five  feet,  so  as  to  effect 
all  the  severest  injuries  thus  designed.  .  .  ."  Well, 
what  judgment  are  we  entitled  to  pass  on  these  investi- 
gations ? 

What  valuable  discovery  for  the  benefit  of  suffering- 
humanity  accrued  therefrom? 

The  highest  European  authority  on  medical  ques- 
tions pronounces  these  experiments  as  most  stupid  and. 
wanton. 

Another  experimenter.  Dr.  A.  Chauveau,  of  France, 
has  described  a  series  of  vivisections  which  he  had  made 
for  the  express  purpose  of  determining  "the  excitability 
of  the  spinal  cord,  and  especially  the  convulsions  and 
pain  produced  by  working  upon  that  excitability."  The 
study  was  almost  exclusively  upon  the  larger  domestic 
animals  because  "they  lend  themselves  marvelously  to 
the  localization  of  excitation  of  the  great  volume  of  their 
spinal  marrow." 

"I  consecrated  especially  to  this  study  more  than 
eighty  subjects. 

"After  being  immovably  fastened,  an  incision  about 
a  foot  long  was  made  over  the  spinal  column  of  the 
creature,  the  vertebrae  are  opened  with  the  help  of  a 
chisel,  mallet  and  pincers,  and  the  spinal  cord  is  ex- 
posed. The  very  nature  of  these  experiments  which 
were  nothing  but  studies  in  sensibility  would  preclude 

30 


the  possibility  of  any  anaesthetic  .  .  .  and  of 
course  no  mention  is  made  of  it." 

A  great  many  examples  of  the  poor  creatures'  ''atro- 
cious sufferings  are  given,"  of  which  I  have  space  for 
only  the  following  instances: 

"An  old  mare  very  docile.  The  electric  excitors 
had  hardly  reached  the  edge  of  the  posterior  cord,  when 
the  animal  .  .  .  uttered  cries  of  pain  and  mani- 
fested the  violent  suffering  it  experienced.' 

"To  produce  these  effects,  it  was  only  necessary  to 
make  an  almost  imperceptible  movement  of  the  instru- 
ment. ...  I  provoked  the  manifestation  over  and 
over  again. 

"An  old  horse,  thin  and  feeble.  In  addition  to  the 
usual  phenomena,  other  manifestations  of  extreme  agony 
were  evoked.  The  tongue  is  in  constant  movement,  the 
globes  of  the  eyes  roll  constantly  in  their  orbits  and  the 
larynx  opens  and  closes  incessantly ;  the  lower  jaw  mean- 
time is  fixed  open." 

"Yet,"  says  Dr.  Leffingwell,  "to  nullify  the  charge 
of  the  stupid  and  wanton  cruelty  of  the  experiment  of 
Dr.  Watson  on  one  hundred  and  forty-one  dogs,  to 
denote  the  greatest  injuries  to  the  spinal  cord.  General 
Sternberg  implies  that  these  experiments  could  not  have 
been  so  very  cruel  or  revolting,  because — as  he  distinctly 
tells  the  Senate  Committee — 'the  spinal  cord  is  not  sen- 
sitive.' 

"If  General  Sternberg  had  said  that  certain  parts 
of  the  spinal  cord  appear  to  be  insensible  to  irritation 
which  generally  causes  pain,  he  would  have  been  scien- 
tifically correct. 

31 


"That,  however,  would  not  have  answered  the  pur- 
pose of  the  denial." 

What  shall  we  say  to  evidence  like  this — evidence 
based  entirely  upon  vivisection  ? 

Eighty  horses  and  other  domestic  animals,  worn  out 
in  the  service  of  man,  die  in  torment  under  the  hands 
of  Chauveau  to  prove  the  sensibility  of  the  spinal  cord; 
twenty  species  of  animals  in  unknown  and  unreckoned 
numbers,  are  sacrificed  by  the  prince  of  vivisectors, 
Brown-Sequard ;  Dalton  tells  us,  as  the  result  of  vivisec- 
tions that  at  certain  points  the  sensibility  of  the  spinal 
cord  is  unquestioned;  Flint  reporting  the  "positive 
results"  of  his  own  vivisections,  tells  us  that  a  certain 
part  of  the  spinal  cord  is  very  sensitive;  and  yet,  to 
break  the  force  of  a  charge  of  cruelty  in  which  he  was 
not  concerned,  the  Surgeon-General  of  the  United  States 
Army  dared  to  stand  up  in  the  presence  of  a  committee 
of  the  United  States  Senate,  and  inform  its  members 
that  "the  spinal  cord  is  not  sensitive  .  .  .  there 
is  no  sensitiveness  of  the  spinal  cord." 

In  the  second  place.  General  Sternberg  suggests  a 
doubt  whether  such  experiments  would  be  made  by  any 
surgeon  or  experimenter  without  the  use  of  anaesthetics. 

Yet  "Dr.  Watson's  pamphlet  describing  these  vivi- 
sections is  to  be  seen  in  the  library  of  the  Surgeon-Gen- 
eral, and  it  contains  no  intimation  of  their  employment." 

It  was  Dr.  W.  S.  Halstead,  of  New  York,  who  per- 
formed a  series  of  experiments  on  thirty  dogs,  recorded 
in  the  International  Journal  of  Science,  by  cutting  out 
pieces  of  intestines  and  sewing  them  in  again,  sometimes 
reversing  the  pieces. 

The  dogs  all  died  after  various  periods  of  agony. 

32 


Dr.  Halstead  said  that  he  omitted  many  of  his  experi- 
ments from  the  record  ''because  most  of  them  seem  now 
rather  absurd  to  me,  and  none  of  them  admit  of  classi- 
fication." 

XIX.    Brutalizing  Tendency. 

These  are  a  few  instances  of  what  is  going  on  in 
private  laboratories  and  in  medical  schools  all  over  the 
country,  and  the  torture  of  the  animals  is  only  one  side 
of  the  matter.  The  other  side  is  moral  degradation  that 
results  to  the  experimenters.  We  have  positive  evi- 
dence of  brutalization  of  medical  students  who  are  being 
carefully  educated  by  thousands  to  forget  every  instinct 
of  mercy.  This  brutalization  follows  them  afterward 
in  their  hospital  work,  and  well  may  indigent  and  help- 
less patients  dread  being  placed  in  such  hands  as  these. 

Many  of  the  best  physicians  have  declared  that  cruel 
experiments  upon  animals  have  not  advanced  the  art  of 
healing  at  all,  and  physiologists,  in  moments  of  candor, 
have  repeatedly  asserted  that  their  object  in  prosecuting 
these  researches  was  not  the  relief  of  suffering,  but  "the 
advancement  of  science." 

It  is  only  when  it  becomes  necessary  to  quiet  the 
aroused  consciences  of  the  people  that  the  plea  is  made 
of  the  necessity  of  these  things  that  science  may  learn 
how  to  cure  human  ills. 

"I  would  shrink  with  horror,"  says  Dr.  Haughton, 
"from  accustoming  classes  of  young  men  to  the  sight 
of  animals  under  vivisection.  .  .  .  Science  would 
gain  nothing,  and  the  world  would  have  let  loose  upon 
it  a  set  of  young  devils." 

33 


"Watch  the  students  at  a  vivisection,"  suggested 
the  late  Dr.  Henry  J.  Bigelow,  Professor  of  Surgery  at 
Harvard  University  Medical  School,  "it  is  the  blood  and 
suffering — not  the  science — that  rivets  their  breathless 
attention." 

"No  one  can  visit  a  great  slaughter-house,"  says  Dr. 
Leffingwell,  "without  being  saddened  by  the  needless 
atrocity  that  seems  now  so  often  inseparable  from  the 
function  of  butchery." 

That  the  act  of  killing  animals  was  of  itself  a  danger 
Ovid  pointed  out  nearly  two  thousand  years  ago  in  lines 
which  Dryden  has  paraphrased: 

"What  more  advance  can  mortals  make  in  sin. 
So  near  perfection,  who  with  blood  begin? 
Deaf  to  the  calf  that  lies  beneath  their  knife. 
Looks  up  and  from  her  butcher  begs  her  life ; 
Deaf  to  the  harmless  kid,  that  ere  he  dies 
All  methods  to  procure  thy  mercy  tries, 
And  imitates  in  vain  thy  children's  cries." 

XX.    Omnipotent  Justice. 

I  once  read  of  a  young  Episcopal  minister  who  said 
that  he  found  much  more  in  the  Bible  to  prove  the 
future  existence  of  animals  than  to  the  contrary. 

Who  is  there,  at  any  rate,  who  can  reasonably  doubt 
the  intelligence  of  many  of  the  quadruped  sub-races — 
the  elephant,  the  horse,  the  bear,  the  monkey,  the  dog 
or  the  cat  ? 

It  is  almost  difficult  to  draw  the  line  between  the 
lowest  savages  and  the  highest  monkeys. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  tell  just  at  what  point  the 
vegetable  merged  into  the  animal  kingdom. 

34 


We  know  that  there  are  hving  things,  such  as  the 
sponge,  which  to  us  seem  nearly  inanimate,  we  also  know 
that  there  are  gorillas  and  chimpanzees  which  closely 
resemble  human  beings. 

Science  and  observation  both  show  us  that  the  ego 
in  animals  is  not,  after  all,  fundamentally  different  from 
the  ego,  or  conscious  personality  in  man.  All  animals, 
human  or  otherwise,  have  brains,  even  though  the  brain 
be  as  rudimentary  as  it  is  in  the  insect  or  the  crustacean. 
Anim.als  differ  from  man  very  much  as  infants  differ 
from  them. 

In  them  instinct  exists  in  a  larger  proportion  and 
the  reasoning  faculties  are  developed  in  a  lesser  de- 
.^ree  than  in  the  adult  human  being. 

And  who  knows  but  that  the  faithful  and  uncom- 
plaining mule  that  spends  his  weary  days  in  the  cheer- 
less recesses  of  the  mine,  the  servant  of  human  beings 
scarcely  more  fortunate  than  himself,  and  perhaps  ends 
liis  humble  but  useful  career  in  a  pit  of  seething  fire 
caused  by  an  explosion  may  not  live  again  In  The  Great 
Hereafter  ? 

"Not  in  your  heaven,  perhaps,  O  biped  grasping, 

That  may  be  true; 
But  think  you  God's  green  pastures  and  still  waters 

Are  all  for  you? 
Let  all  the  weary  and  the  heavy  laden 

Come  unto  me. 
And  that  poor,  patient  ass  by  Balaam  beaten, 

Why  may  not  she  ?" 

The  two  cardinal  elements  of  the  Creator  are 
Power  and  Righteousness,  and  to  Him  essentially 
"belong  Absolute  Justice  and  Infinite  Mercy.    We  have 

35 


no  right  to  be  sure  that  everything  that  has  once  lived 
— even  in  the  embryo — may  not  live  again,  and  continue 
to  develop. 

As  Dr.  Leffingwell  has  himself  so  eloquently  and 
ably  expressed  it: 

"Only  a  few  thousand  years  ago,  and  your  ancestors 
and  mine  were  the  lowest  type  of  savage  barbarians, 
dwellers  in  caves,  clothed  in  skins ;  almost  indistinguish- 
able— except  by  the  guttural  elements  of  vocalized 
speech — from  the  animals  they  hunted  and  upon  which 
they  fed.  The  scientist  tells  us  even  this  was  not  the 
beginning. 

"Carry  your  imagination  still  backward  into  the 
awful  abyss  of  uncounted  ages;  and  there  was  a  time 
when  even  your  ancestors,  O,  Professor  of  Biology,  and 
those  of  the  dog  beneath  your  knife,  were  of  the  same 
species  of  living  creatures,  speaks  the  science  of  to-day. 

"Out  of  the  same  black  darkness,  struggling  for 
existence,  you  have  emerged — in  far  different  form,  but 
yet  closely  related,  not  only  by  origin  but  in  every  func- 
tion of  organized  existence." 

XXI.    Callous  and  Defiant  Indifference. 

"A  true  physiologist,"  says  Dr.  Claude  Bernard, 
"does  not  hear  the  animal's  cries  of  pain. 

"He  is  blind  to  the  blood  that  flows.  He  sees  nothing 
but  his  idea,  and  organisms  which  conceal  from  him  the 
secret  he  is  resolved  to  discover. 

"The  question  of  benefit  to  one's  fellow-creatures 
need  not  for  a  moment  enter  into  his  thoughts." 

36 


XXII.  Wanton  Abuse. 

Again  Dr.  Leffingwell  says :  "Upon  the  expediency 
of  total  repression  of  all  experiments  on  animals,  pain- 
ful or  not  painful,  there  is  a  difference  of  opinion.  But 
surely^  something  might  be  done  to  lessen  that  needless 
torture  which,  as  a  custom,  is  spreading  everywhere  in 
America  unchecked. 

"Is  it  an  abuse  of  vivisection  to  freeze  rabbits  to 
death  before  a  class  of  young  men  and  women  merely 
to  illustrate  what  everyone  knew  in  advance? 

"It  is  done  annually." 

Dr.  Michael  Foster,  of  Cambridge  University,  who 
minutely  described  all  the  details  of  the  experiment  on 
recurrent  sensibility  in  the  "Handbook  for  the  Physio- 
logical Laboratory,"  nevertheless  tells  us,  "I  have 
never  performed  it,  and  have  never  seen  it  done,"  partly, 
as  he  confesses,  "from  the  horror  at  the  pain."  And 
finally  Dr.  Burton-Sanderson,  physiologist  at  Univer- 
sity College,  London,  states  with  the  utmost  emphasis, 
in  regard  to  the  performance  of  this  demonstration  on 
the  spinal  cord,  "I  am  perfectly  certain  that  no  physiolo- 
gist, none  of  the  leading  men,  in  Germany  for  example, 
.     would  exhibit  an  experiment  of  that  kind." 

XXIII.  Now  Mark  the  Contrast. 

Now  mark  the  contrast.  This  experiment — which 
we  are  told  passes  even  the  callousness  of  Germany  to 
repeat;  which  every  leading  champion  of  vivisection  in 
Great  Britain  reprobates  for  medical  teaching;  which 
some  of  them  shrink  even  from  seeing,  themselves,  from 
horror  at  the  tortures  necessarily  inflicted;  which  the 

Z7 


most  ruthless  among  them  dare  not  exhibit  to  the  young 
men  of  England — this  experiment  has  been  performed 
publicly  again  and  again  in  American  Medical  Colleges, 
without  exciting  even  a  whisper  of  protest  or  the  faint- 
est murmur  of  remonstrance! 

In  this  country  our  physiologists  are  rather  followers 
of  Magendie  and  Bernard^  after  the  methods  in  vogue 
at  Paris  and  Leipsic^  than  men  who  are  governed  by  the 
caution  and  conservatism  which  generally  characterizes 
the   physiological    teaching   of   London   and   Oxford. 

XXIV.  How  Far  Shall  Demonstration  be  Carried? 

Every  medical  student  in  New  York  knows  that 
experiments  involving  pain  are  repeatedly  performed  to 
illustrate  teaching. 

Granting  all  the  advantages  which  follow  demon- 
stration of  certain  physiological  facts,  the  cost  is  pain, 
pain  sometimes  amounting  to  prolonged  and  excruciat- 
ing torture. 

Is  the  gain  worth  this?  .  .  .  "The  physician 
to  the  late  Queen  Victoria,  Sir  Thomas  Watson,  with 
whose  'Lectures  on  Physics'  every  medical  practitioner 
in  this  country  is  said  to  be  familiar,  says :  'I  hold  that 
no  teacher  or  man  of  science  who  by  his  own  previous 
experiments  .  .  .  has  thoroughly  satisfied  him- 
self of  the  solution  of  any  physiological  problem,  is 
justified  in  repeating  the  experiments,  however  merci- 
fully, to  appease  the  natural  curiosity  of  a  class  of  stu- 
dents  or  of  scientific  friends.'  " 

38 


Sir  George  Burroughs,  President  of  the  Royal  Col- 
lege of  Physicians,  says:  "I  do  not  think  that  an  experi- 
ment should  be  repeated  over  and  over  again  in  our 
medical  schools  to  illustrate  what  is  already  established." 

Sir  James  Paget,  Surgeon  Extraordinary  to  the 
Queen,  said  before  the  commission  that  "experiments 
for  the  purpose  of  repeating  anything  already  ascer- 
tained ought  never  to  he  shown  to  classes.     .     .     ." 

Dr.  Rolleston,  Professor  of  Physiology  at  Oxford, 
said  that  for  class  demonstrations,  limitations  should 
undoubtedly  be  imposed,  and  those  limitations  should 
render  illegal  painful  experiments  before  classes. 

"If  pain  could  be  estimated  in  money,"  says  Dr. 
Leffingwell,  "no  corporation  ever  existed  which  would 
be  satisfied  with  such  waste  of  capital  in  experiments 
so  futile:  no  mining  company  would  permit  a  quarter 
century  of  'prospecting  in  such  barren  regions.^ 

"Once  we  admit  the  right  to  torture  a  living  creature 
simply  as  an  aid  to  memory,  and  where  shall  we  put 
bounds  to  the  cruelty  one  may  inflict?"  Again  Dr. 
Leffingwell  says: 

XXV.     American  Physiologists. 

"Dr.  Gerald  Yeo,  the  professor  of  physiology  in 
King's  College,  London,  in  an  article  of  the  Fortnightly 
Review,  protested  against  English  physiologists  being 
held  responsible  for  the  cruelties  of  other  lands.  'Why 
repeat,'  he  says,  'the  oft-told  tale  of  horrors  contained 
in  the  works  of  Claude  Bernard,  Paul  Bert,  Brown- 
Sequard,  and  Richet  in  France,  of  Goltz  in  Germany, 
Mantegazza  in  Italy,  and  Flint  in  America?' — coupling 
thus  the  name  of  an  American  physiologist  with  the 

39 


names  of  some  of  the  most  inhuman  and  brutal  vivi- 
sectors  that  ever  walked  the  earth." 

On  page  fifty  of  his  book,  Dr.  Leffingwell  says: 
"Take  another  instance  of  'original  investigations.' 

"Crile,  an  American  physiologist,  has  recently  dem- 
onstrated to  what  extent  experimentation  may  be  carried 
on  here  in  America,  where,  as  he,  himself,  tells  us, 
'there  is  no  law  governing  vivisection.' 

"Experimenting  upon  one  hundred  and  thirty-two 
dogs,  he  subjected  them  to  every  form  of  conceivable 
injury;  cutting,  tearing  and  burning  the  skin;  cutting 
and  crushing  muscles;  crushing  the  joints;  crushing, 
tearing,  cutting  and  burning  the  tongue;  pouring  boil- 
ing water  within  the  abdomen;  manipulating  vital 
organs;  burning  and  crushing  the  paws,  tearing  and 
crushing  nerves — together  with  other  operations  too 
hideous  for  mention. 

"To  the  scientific  ardor  of  this  young  man,  even 
pregnancy  of  the  animal  suggested  no  reason  for  exclud- 
ing the  creature  from  experimentation." 

XXVI.    The  Just  Moral  Proportion. 

"The  animals  as  we  see  and  know  them  as  compan- 
ions, servants  and  friends,  are  but  our  younger  brothers 
of  creation  and  we  should  not  wantonly  and  unnecessar- 
ily inflict  upon  'the  least  of  these'  the  slightest  pang." 

I  heartily  agree  with  Dr.  Leffingwell  when  he  says, 
after  having  carefully  weighed  and  considered  the 
matter : 

"Our  moral  duty,  to  all  living  creatures,  from  the 
highest  to  the  lowest  form  of  life,  is  to  treat  them  pre- 
cisely as  we  ourselves  should  be  willing  to  be  treated 

40 


for  the  same  objects  in  circumstances  of  their  condition 
and  form.  .  .  .  While  I  can  easily  bring  myself 
to  the  conception  of  a  willingness  to  yield  mere  existence 
for  the  actual  necessities  of  beings  almost  infinitely 
higher  than  myself,  yet  it  becomes  quite  another  matter 
when  I  try  to  imagine  a  consent  to  suffer — even  in  the 
lowest  forms  of  life — the  least  useless  pain. 

"I  cannot  do  it.  Judged  from  this  standard  of  ethics, 
all  forms  of  so-called  sport,  all  that  destruction  of 
animal  life  merely  for  savage  amusement  and  delight 
in  killing  something — must  be  regarded  as  immoral. 
.  .  That  cruel  sacrifice  of  song  birds  to  the 
evanescent  fashions  of  feminine  adornment  is  not  one 
that  woman  can  justify  to  herself  by  this  ideal  of  right 
and  wrong. 

"Much  that  to-day  accompanies  the  killing  of  animals 
for  food,  will  sometime  be  deemed  unnecessary  and 
morally  wrong.  If  society  decides  that  for  man's  bene- 
fit it  must  continue  to  take  the  life  of  animals,  death  will 
then  be  inflicted  with  the  utmost  precaution  against  the 
addition  of  one  needless  pang. 

"Should  if  be  impracticable  to  kill  any  creature 
except  by  the  possible  addition  of  extreme  agony,  we 
shall  cease  to  use  it  as  food." 

XXVIL    Vivisection  in  Public  Schools. 

Vivisection  as  practiced  in  the  public  schools  is  gen- 
erally performed  upon  animals  thoroughly  anaesthetized ; 
but  is  it  a  good  thing  for  small  boys  and  girls,  most  of 
whom  will  never  be  physicians,  to  become  hardened  to 
the  sight  of  death  and  bloodshed? 

41 


From  Dr.  Leffingwell's  chapter  or  paper  on  "Physi- 
ology in  our  PubHc  Schools/'  I  quote  the  following  para- 
graphs: "A  quickly  forgotten  smattering  of  anatomy 
may  indeed  be  learned  by  a  child,  dabbling  its  fingers 
in  bloody  tissues,  but  nothing  which  might  not  be  better 
learned  by  other  methods,  without  danger  of  moral  per- 
version and  at  the  cost  of  not  a  single  pang. 

"Everything  needful  may  be  illustrated  by  colored 
charts  and  manikins." 

XXVIII.    Vivisection  for  Veterinary  Purposes. 

There  is  one  branch  of  vivisection  which  cannot  even 
attempt  to  hide  behind  the  cloak  of  abstract  scientific 
knowledge  or  remote  possible  utility  to  humanity. 

That  is  the  vivisection  of  animals  for  veterinary 
purposes.  Probably  for  the  combined  quantity  and 
quality  of  torture  inflicted  there  is  no  spot  on  our  beauti- 
ful earth  so  hellish  as  Alfort  in  France,  where  there  is 
a  large  and  noted  veterinary  college.  Many  years  ago 
there  were  protests  against  the  barbarities  enacted  there, 
and  now  within  the  last  several  years  many  noble  men 
and  women,  stirred  to  action  by  the  knowledge  of  that 
den  of  horror  in  their  own  land,  have  been  making  des- 
perate efforts  to  put  a  stop  to  the  wanton  and  reckless 
atrocities  there  perpetrated. 

It  is  said  that  students  themselves  are  given  carte 
blanche,  and  there  is  no  attempt  to  discourage  them  in 
their  diabolical  pursuit,  it  having  even  been  said  that 
such  practice  helps  to  render  them  callous  to  suffering 
and  indifferent  to  any  pain  they  may  afterwards  inflict 
in  their  veterinary  practice. 

42 


Some  time  ago  the  London  Times  published  the  fol- 
lowing: "At  the  veterinary  College  of  Alfort,  a 
wretched  horse  is  periodically  given  up  to  a  group  of 
students  to  experimentalize  upon. 

"They  tie  him  down  and  torture  him  for  hours,  the 
operations  being  graduated  in  such  a  manner  that  sixty 
or  even  more  may  be  performed  before  death  ensues. 
The  same  authority,  Dr.  Guardia,  of  the  Academy  of 
Medicine,  declares  these  tortures  perfectly  useless,  and 
that  the  experiments  might  just  as  well  be  made  on 
dead  horses.  .  .  .  These  students  are  scarcely 
tinder  the  control  of  any  one — though  a  professor  now 
and  then  makes  his  appearance,  from  the  forenoon  up 
to  three  o'clock,  consequently  they  can  do  as  they  please. 

"From  the  rising  of  the  sun  until  its  setting,  these 
iDloody  deeds  have  been  enacted,  and  every  session  the 
walls  of  that  enclosure  have  witnessed  an  amount  of 
^slaughter  and  torture  which  far  eclipses  the  gladiatorial 
shades  of  Imperial  Rome. 

"Need  I  say  that  the  sight  furnished  by  these  eight 
poor  animals,  when  this  so-called  'dexterity'  has  done 
its  work,  is  not  to  be  paralleled  by  a  battle  field  when 
the  excitement  has  passed  away,  or  in  the  custom  and 
ceremonies  of  the  most  savage  nations.  Their  ghastly 
appearance  is  indescribable,  and  if  any  life  is  left,  it  but 
exaggerates  and  distorts  their  hideousness." 

Yet  this  Alfort  is  considered  the  greatest  veterinary 
school  in  the  world,  and  a  graduate  from  it  has  been  in 
charge  of  the  Harvard  Medical  School,  and  another 
graduate  has  been  exploiting  himself  with  his  French 
methods  of  instruction  at  or  near  Philadelphia.  It  is 
to  stop  such  atrocities  that  the  New  England  Anti- 

43 


vivisection  Society  has  been  organized  and  incor- 
porated?' 

The  following  are  a  few  of  the  experiments  per- 
formed by  men  who  are  well  known  to  us,  which  still 
further  illustrate  that  under  the  stimulus  of  scientific 
curiosity,  they  seem  to  have  become  oblivious  to  suffer- 
ing and  to  have  lost  all  pity.  .  .  .  Professor  Ott, 
of  Johns  Hopkins  University,  "opens  the  spinal  column 
of  cats  (perhaps  the  most  nervously  organized  of  all 
living  creatures)  and  applies  electricity  to  the  spinal 
marrow  without  anaesthetics." 

Professor  Senn,  of  Chicago,  "tears  the  pancreas  of 
an  animal  in  two.  Animal  is  left  for  weeks  to  denote 
result."  Dr.  Walton,  of  Harvard  Medical  School, 
"excises  epiglottis  of  dogs,  observes  for  twenty-one  days, 
chokes  in  swallowing  liquids  and  solids  at  every  trial." 

Dr.  Crile  publishes  an  account  of  experiments  in 
surgical  shock.  In  the  book  experiments  are  described 
such  as  "tearing  and  twisting  the  sciatic  nerve,  extirpa- 
tion of  an  eye  and  manipulation  and  bruising  of  the 
socket,  injection  of  water  into  stomach  to  bursting,"  etc. 

XXIX.    A  Strong  Moral  Arraignment. 

"Cardinal  Manning  has  expressed  the  situation  most 
eloquently  when  he  said:  'Nothing  can  justify — no 
claim  of  science,  no  conjectural  result,  no  hope  for  dis- 
covery, such  horrors  as  these.  .  .  .  Whereas, 
these  torments,  refined  and  indescribable,  are  certain 
.  everything  about  the  results  is  uncertain,  but 
the  certain  infraction  of  the  first  laws  of  mercy  and 
humanity.^  " 

44 


''Let  us  remember,"  some  one  has  most  wisely  said, 
that  "what  Lord  Shaftesbury  has  called  'the  insolence  of 
physiological  science'  has  in  it  perils  peculiarly  impor- 
tant to  a  republic,  and  especially  deserving  the  attention 
of  our  legislatures.  .  .  .  Vivisection  at  its  best, 
is  an  accused  defendant.  It  has  been  arraigned  in  many 
lands,  and  condemned  in  some.  At  its  best  if  exists 
under  suspicion.  A  t  its  worst,  it  is  a  shame  to  the  civil- 
isation of  a  Christian  State/* 

XXX.    Injury  to  Science. 

On  page  151  Dr.  Leffingwell  says,  "Science  deserves 
better  service  than  the  sacrifice  of  accuracy  to  her 
imaginary  interests.  She  stands  in  no  danger  except 
from  such  defenders;  certainly  the  legal  regulation  of 
vivisection  can  do  her  no  harm."  Again  he  says :  "The 
habit  of  mind  which  tends  to  exaggerate  and  magnify 
a  fact  is  far  more  opposed  to  scientific  progress  than  the 
mental  scepticism  which  doubts,  questions,  debates,  and 
yields  credence  only  to  overwhelming  proof. 

"Some  day  it  will  be  seen  that  blunders  of  scientists 
themselves,  work  greater  injury  to  science  than  any 
assaults  of  honest  ignorance;  that  fidelity  to  fact  is  the 
sincerest  homage  she  can  ever  receive;  and  that  no 
greater  detriment  coidd  come  to  her  than  through  the 
unreliability  and  disingenuousness  of  men  who  assume 
to  defend  her  with  exaggeration  and  untruth." 

On  page  19  he  says:  "That  is  a  worthy  ideal  of 
conduct  which  seeks  'Never  to  blend  our  pleasures  or 
our  pride  with  sorrow  of  the  meanest  thing  that  feels.'  " 

Is  not  this  a  sentiment  which  even  science  may  fitly 
share  ? 

45 


Are  we  justified  in  neglecting  the  evidence  she  offers 
purchased  in  the  past  at  such  immeasurable  agonies  and 
in  demanding  that  year  after  year  new  victims  shall  be 
subjected  to  torture,  only  to  demonstrate  what  none  of 
us  doubt? 

That  is  the  chief  question.  For,  if  all  compromise 
be  persistently  rejected  by  physiologists,  there  is  danger 
that  society  may  confound  in  one  common  condemnation 
all  experiments  of  this  nature,  and  make  the  whole  prac- 
tice impossible,  except  in  secret  and  as  a  crime. 

XXXI.    Conclusion. 

The  following  paragraphs  are  a  few  extracts  from 
a  statement  made  by  Herbert  Spencer,  of  England: 
^'Within  certain  limitations  we  regard  vivisection  to  be 
so  justified  by  utility  as  to  be  legitimate,  expedient  and 
right.  Beyond  these  boundaries  it  is  cruel,  monstrous, 
and  wrong.  Experimentation  upon  living  animals  we 
consider  justifiable  when  employed  to  determine  the 
action  of  new  remedies;  for  tests  of  suspected  poisons; 
for  the  study  of  new  methods  of  surgical  procedure,  or 
in  the  search  for  the  causation  of  disease — in  short  for 
any  object  where  the  probable  benefit  to  mankind  is  very 
great,  and  the  suffering  inflicted  not  greater  than  that 
of  instantaneous  death  nor  more  than  the  pain  and  dis- 
tress of  human  ailments,  to  alleviate  which  the  experi- 
ment is  made. 

"On  the  other  hand,  we  regard  as  cruel  and  wrong 
the  infliction  of  torment  upon  animals  in  the  search  of 
physiological  facts  which  have  no  conceivable  relation 
to  the  treatment  of  human  diseases,  or  experiments  that 
seem  to  be  made  only  for  the  purpose  of  gratifying  a 

46 


heartless  curiosity.  .  .  .  We  consider  as  wholly 
unjustifiable  the  practice  of  subjecting  animals  to  tor- 
ture in  the  laboratory  or  class-room,  merely  for  the 
purpose  of  demonstrating  well-known  facts. 

"We  hold  that  the  infliction  of  torment  upon  living 
animals  under  such  circumstances  is  not  justified  by 
necessity,  nor  is  it  a  fitting  exhibition  for  the  contempla- 
tion of  youth." 

Dr.  Cochran,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  formerly  President  of 
the  Polytechnic  Institute,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  has  expressed 
his  opinion  that  all  such  exhibitions  are  of  the  most 
pernicious  tendency  and  should  not  be  witnessed  by  men 
under  forty  years  of  age. 

Frederick  Treves,  F.R.C.S.  (formerly  Surgeon-Ex- 
traordinary to  H.  M.  the  Queen,  and  Consulting  Sur- 
geon to  the  London  Hospital)  says:  "Many  years  ago 
I  carried  out  on  the  Continent  sundry  operations  upon 
the  intestines  of  dogs,  but  such  are  the  differences 
hetween  the  human  and  the  canine  bowel  that  when  I 
came  to  operate  upon  men,  I  found  I  was  much  hampered 
hy  my  new  experience,  that  I  had  everything  to  unlearn, 
and  that  my  experiment  had  done  little  but  unfit  me 
to  deal  with  the  human  intestine." 

From  Sir  John  Eric  Erichsen,  F.R.S.,  I  quote  the 
following :  "All  experiments  on  living  animals,  if  pain- 
ful, should  be  performed  under  anaesthetics. 

"Experiments  on  living  animals  are  most  carefully 
restricted  in  this  country.  .  .  .  /  acted  as  Gov- 
ernment Inspector  of  living  animals  for  several  years, 
and  I  can  safely  assert  that  the  provisions  of  the  act 
were  vigorously  enforced,  and  never  to  my  knowledge 
contravened."    And  yet  it  has  actually  been  claimed  by 

47 


radical  vivisectionists  that  no  physician  of  any  standing 
would  be  willing  to  inspect  the  laboratories. 

Will  not  every  lover  of  justice  and  mercy  in  America, 
and  every  physician  worthy  of  the  name,  lend  his  or  her 
influence  towards  bringing  the  practice  of  vivisection 
within  proper  limits  and  placing  it  in  the  hands  of  men 
who  are  not  as  Dr.  Gould  says:  "a  disgrace  both  to 
science  and  humanity"? 

A  gifted  woman  is  quoted  as  saying:  "Vivisection 
is  only  possible  because  the  world — so  merciful,  but  so 
careless,  cannot  endure  to  learn  what  vivisection  means." 

From  page  203  of  "The  Vivisection  Question,"  I 
quote  the  following  eloquent  conclusion  of  Dr.  Leffing- 
well,  which  I  gladly  adopt  as  expressing  my  own  views : 
'Tn  the  name  of  the  ideal  of  science  which  Herbert 
Spencer  represents,  in  the  name  of  those  whom  the  state 
would  protect,  in  the  name  of  humanity ;  we  ask  not  for 
the  abolition  of  vivisection;  not  for  the  restriction 
against  useful  research,  not  for  any  impediment  to  the 
progress  of  medicine,  but  simply  for  such  legislation 
as  shall  make  vivisection  subject  to  the  law,  prevent  its 
abuse  and  stamp  its  cruelty  as  a  crime." 


48 


APPENDIX 

The  following  is  the  full  text  of  the  "Davis-Lee" 
bill  for  the  regulation  of  animal  vivisection  which  was 
drafted  by  Frederick  P.  Bellamy,  Esquire,  intro- 
duced into  the  New  York  Legislature  for  the  year 
1908  by  Senator  Davis  and  Assemblyman  Lee,  and 
reported  to  the  Judiciary  Committee  of  both  houses. 

The  bill  was  publicly  discussed  before  a  joint  session 
of  the  Judiciary  Committees  of  the  Senate  and  Assembly 
on  March  25,  1908,  and  was  subsequently  reported 
favorably  by  the  Senate  Judiciary  Committee  and 
passed  to  a  third  reading. 

Owing  to  the  adjournment  of  the  Legislature  before 
the  bill  was  reached  on  the  Senate  Calendar  it  did  not 
come  before  the  Senate  itself  for  its  vote. 

This  bill  or  another  substantially  similar  to  it  will, 
it  is  hoped,  be  introduced  in  the  coming  Legislature. 

N.  Y.  Legislature  of  1908. 
Senate  Bill  ^'jy.  Assembly  Bill  470. 

"An  act  to  prevent  cruelty  by  regulating  experiments 
on  living  animals." 

The  People  of  the  State  of  New  York,  represented  in  Senate 
and  Assembly,  do  enact  as  follows: 

Section  i.  Restrictions  on  the  performance  of  experi- 
ments.— An  experiment  upon  a  living  vertebrate  animal  of  a 
nature  calculated  to  cause  pain  or  distress  to  such  animal  shall 
not  be  performed  except  subject  to  the  following  restrictions: 

I.  Such  experiment  shall  be  performed  only  under  the 
authority  of  a  college,  hospital  or  laboratory  incorporated  under 

49 


the  laws  of  this  State,  or  under  the  authority  of  the  state  com- 
missioner of  health,  or  a  board  of  health  of  a  city. 

2.  The  building  or  part  of  a  building  in  which  it  is  proposed 
to  conduct  such  experiment  must  be  registered  with  the  state 
commissioner  of  health,  who  shall  issue  to  the  corporation  or 
individual  applying  therefor  a  license  or  permit  describing  such 
building  or  part  of  a  building  and  authorizing  animal  experi- 
mentation therein  in  accordance  with  this  act. 

3.  The  animal  before  the  beginning  and  during  the  whole 
course  of  such  experiment  shall  be  sufficiently  under  the  influence 
of  a  general  anaesthetic  to  prevent  it  from  feeling  pain,  excepting 
only  that  anaesthetics  need  not  be  thus  employed : 

(o)     In  tests  of  foods  or  of  drugs; 

(b)  In  so-called  inoculation  experiments; 

(c)  In  investigations  regarding  the  communicability  of 
human  or  animal  diseases ; 

(d)  During  the  process  of  recovery  from  any  experiment 
pertaining  to  surgery  or  surgical  method;  provided,  however, 
that  the  cutting  operation  must  be  done  while  the  animal  is  in  a 
condition  of  insensibility  produced  by  anaesthetics. 

4.  Every  animal  subjected  to  such  experiment,  if  serious 
pain  is  likely  to  continue  after  the  effect  of  the  anaesthetic  has 
ceased,  or  if  any  serious  injury  has  been  inflicted,  shall  be  killed 
immediately  upon  the  conclusion  of  the  experiment  and  while 
under  the  influence  of  the  anaesthetic,  except  in  surgical  or 
pathological  experiments  where  it  is  necessary  for  the  success 
of  the  investigation  to  permit  the  animal  to  live. 

5.  The  substance  known  as  urari  or  curare  shall  not  for 
the  purpose  of  this  act  be  deemed  an  anaesthetic. 

6.  The  experiment  must  be  performed  with  a  view  to  the 
advancement  of  physiological  knowledge  or  of  knowledge  which 
will  be  useful  for  saving  or  prolonging  life  or  alleviating  suf- 
fering. 

7.  Experiments  shall  not  be  performed  for  demonstrating 
facts  which  have  already  been  proved  except  when  thus  per- 

50 


formed  as  part  of  the  course  of  study  in  a  regularly  incorporated 
college,  and  such  demonstrations  shall  be  conducted  so  as  not  to 
involve  the  infliction  of  pain. 

Section  2.  Reports. — Every  corporation  or  person  under 
whose  direction  experiments  under  this  act  are  performed,  shall 
make  a  report,  in  writing,  in  the  months  of  January  and  July 
in  each  year,  stating  in  general  the  methods  and  anesthetics  used, 
the  number  and  species  of  animals  used,  and  the  nature  and 
result  of  such  experiments  performed  during  the  previous  six 
months,  in  such  form  and  with  such  details  as  the  state  com- 
missioner of  health  may  require,  and  shall  file  such  report  in  the 
office  of  the  state  commissioner  of  health.  All  such  reports  shall 
be  published  in  the  annual  report  of  the  state  commissioner  of 
health,  except  that,  in  the  discretion  of  the  state  commissioner 
of  health,  the  publication  of  any  report  of  a  series  of  experiments 
not  then  completed  may  be  postponed  until  his  next  annual  report. 

Section  3.  Violation  of  Act — ^Any  person  who  shall  per- 
form any  experiment  upon  any  living  animal  calculated  to  give 
pain  or  distress,  without  conforming  to  the  provisions  of  this  act, 
shall  be  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor,  punishable  by  imprisonment  for 
not  less  than  sixty  days  nor  more  than  one  year,  or  by  a  fine  of 
not  less  than  one  hundred  dollars  nor  more  than  five  hundred 
dollars. 

Section  4.  Experiments  under  order  of  court. — ^A  judge 
or  justice  of  a  court  of  record  may,  by  order,  in  a  criminal  case 
pending  therein,  if  satisfied  that  it  is  essential  for  the  purpose  of 
justice,  authorize  the  performance  of  experiments  on  living 
animals;  but  such  experiment  shall  be  performed,  except  as  to 
the  requirements  of  a  license,  in  accordance  with  the  provisions 
of  Section  i  hereof. 

Section  5.  Effect. — This  act  shall  take  effect  on  the  first 
day  of  July,  nineteen  hundred  and  eight. 


51 


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